A&A 565, A102 (2014) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201423460 & c ESO 2014 Astrophysics High resolution mesospheric sodium properties for adaptive optics applications? T. Pfrommer1 and P. Hickson1;2;3 1 European Southern Observatory (ESO), Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, 85758 Garching bei München, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 2 University of British Columbia, Department of Physics and Astronomy, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC, V6T1Z1, Canada e-mail: [email protected] 3 Institut d’Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Université de Liège, Allée du 6 août, 17 – Bat. B5c, 4000 Liège 1, Belgique Received 19 January 2014 / Accepted 20 March 2014 ABSTRACT Context. The performance of laser guide star adaptive optics (AO) systems for large optical and infrared telescopes is affected by variability of the sodium layer, located at altitudes between 80 and 120 km in the upper mesosphere and lower thermosphere. The abundance and density structure of the atomic sodium found in this region is subject to local and global weather effects, planetary and gravity waves and magnetic storms, and is variable on time scales down to tens of milliseconds, a range relevant to AO. Aims. It is therefore important to characterize the structure and dynamical evolution of the sodium region on small, as well as large spatial and temporal scales. Parameters of particular importance for AO are the mean sodium altitude, sodium layer width and the temporal power spectrum of the centroid altitude. Methods. We have conducted a three-year campaign employing a high-resolution lidar system installed on the 6-m Large Zenith Telescope (LZT) located near Vancouver, Canada. During this period, 112 nights of useful data were obtained. Results. The vertical density profile of atomic sodium shows remarkable structure and variability. Smooth Gaussian-shaped profiles rarely occur. Multiple internal layers are frequently found. These layers often have sharp lower edges, with scale heights of just a few hundred meters, and tend to drift downwards at a typical rate of one kilometer every two to three hours. Individual layers can persist for many hours, but their density and internal structure can be highly variable. Sporadic layers are seen reaching peak densities several times the average, often in just a few minutes. Coherent vertical oscillations are often found, typically extending over tens of kilometers in altitude. Regions of turbulence are evident and Kelvin-Helmholtz instability are sometimes seen. The mean value of the centroid altitude is found to be 90:8 ± 0:1 km. The sodium layer width was determined by computing the altitude range that contains a specified fraction of the returned sodium light. We find a mean value of 13:1 ± 0:3 km for the range containing 95% of the photons, with a maximum width of 21 km. The temporal power spectral density of fluctuations of the centroid altitude is well described by a power law having an index that ranges from −1:6 to −2:3 with a mean value of −1:87 ± 0:02. This is significantly steeper than the value of −5=3 that would be expected if the dynamics were dominated by Kolmogorov turbulence, indicating that other factors such +6 2 −1 as gravity waves play an important role. The amplitude of the power spectrum has a mean value of 34−5 m Hz at a frequency of 1 Hz, but ranges over two orders of magnitude. The annual means of the index and amplitude show a variation that is well beyond the calculated error range. Long-term global weather patterns may be responsible for this effect. Key words. atmospheric effects – instrumentation: adaptive optics – site testing – methods: observational 1. Introduction the use of AO to a small sky coverage because sufficiently bright natural guide stars are rare (Wang et al. 2009). Thus, laser Next-generation extremely-large ground-based telescopes systems are employed to create artificial guide stars, either by (ELTs) will provide unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, Rayleigh scattering in the lower 20 km of the atmosphere or by enabling astronomers to address many open scientific topics resonant excitation of sodium atoms in the upper mesosphere ranging from the formation and evolution of galaxies to the and lower thermosphere. Rayleigh systems are well-suited for characterization of exoplanets (Lyubenova & Kissler-Patig smaller telescopes and ground-layer AO systems. However, 2009; Silva et al. 2007). These telescopes will achieve high with large apertures, differences in propagation paths between resolution by mean of adaptive optics (AO) systems (Beckers light from the guide star and the science target (the cone effect) 1993). AO systems employ wavefront sensors (WFS) to measure is more severe due to the low altitude of the Rayleigh guide star. the wavefront distortion introduced by atmospheric turbulence Therefore sodium laser guide stars are preferred for ELTs. along the line of sight to reference “guide” stars. A correction These laser guide stars (LGS) appear as luminous columns is then computed in real time and the wavefront is corrected by of backscattered light in the ∼10−20 km thick sodium region. means of deformable mirrors (Ellerbroek et al. 2008). To match They appear star-like when seen from directly below, but elon- atmospheric time scales, information about the instantaneous gated when seen from regions of the entrance pupil that are off- wavefront error (WFE) requires bright guide stars. This restricts set from the laser, an effect that increases with telescope aper- ? The database is only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to ture. This elongation spreads the sodium light over more WFS cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via pixels, reducing the signal-to-noise ratio. Furthermore, the inten- http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/565/A102 sity structure within the elongated LGS is irregular and variable, Article published by EDP Sciences A102, page 1 of 13 A&A 565, A102 (2014) reflecting the evolving density structure of the sodium region. refocusing optics, a narrow-band filter, and a high-efficiency This introduces an uncertainty in the location of the centroid of GaAsP-based photomultiplier. Counts from the four photomulti- the LGS image, degrading the performance of the AO system pliers are discriminated, timed and accumulated in a high-speed even more. This error increases linearly with LGS elongation, 4-channel pulse-counting system. and is thus proportional to the telescope diameter. This system provides high resolution Na-profiles with 4 m Variations in the altitude of the centroid of the vertical den- height and 20 ms time resolution, allowing us to study, for the sity distribution of the atomic sodium results in shifts in the first time, sodium layer dynamics on scales important to AO sys- position of the centroid of the LGS. The AO system interprets tems (Pfrommer et al. 2009). Typically about 103 returned pho- this as a change in focus, but cannot distinguish it from focus tons are detected for each laser pulse. This results in an uncer- variations that are produced by atmospheric turbulence (which tainty in the centroid altitude on the order of ∼50 to 100 m. need to be corrected in order to keep the science target in focus). Averaging over one second (50 laser pulses) reduces this uncer- Natural guide stars (NGS) can be used to break the degeneracy, tainty by a factor of 7. The resulting sodium profiles are being but only at low temporal frequencies (Herriot et al. 2006). At a used to verify control algorithms and optimize their performance given temporal frequency, the resulting focus wavefront error is (Conan et al. 2009). In addition, our profiles are being used to proportional to the square of the telescope diameter. However, improve return flux simulations for existing and new laser sys- larger apertures collect more NGS photons allowing more fre- tems for LGS AO systems (Holzlöhner et al. 2010). quent measurement of the focus, which partially offsets this ef- Over a three-year time span from 2008 to 2010, 476 h of data fect. The net result depends on the spectral index of the sodium were obtained, covering all seasons. After an initial commission- centroid altitude power spectrum. ing phase, regular observations commenced in July 2008 using Atmospheric lidars have been employed to study the struc- a “first-generation” photon-counting system. We obtained 110 h ture of the sodium region for several decades (Clemesha et al. of observations in 2008 and a further 56 h up to the end of July 1980; Gardner et al. 1986; von Zahn & Hansen 1988; She et al. 2009. In the fall of 2008, a failure of the optical encoder inside 1991). These systems generally have small apertures and re- the LZT primary mirror air bearing necessitated a shutdown for quire integration times of several minutes in order to achieve most of the winter. Beginning in August 2009 with engineering sufficient signal-to-noise ratios. However, AO systems are sen- nights, a “second-generation” counting system was installed and sitive to frequencies as high as a kHz. Performance estimates regular observations began with this new and improved system for AO systems on ELTs have thus relied on a highly uncertain in September 2009. 56 h of observations were obtained in the extrapolation, over four decades of frequency, from existing low- rest of 2009 and 256 h of observations were acquired in 2010. A frequency measurements (Davis et al. 2006). This circumstance summary of hours of observation obtained each month is given motivated us to design a sodium lidar (light detection and rang- in Table1. ing) system for the Large Zenith Telescope (LZT), located near Vancouver, Canada at 49◦N latitude (Hickson et al. 2007). The 6-m aperture of this telescope provides an increase of as much 3.